Brand New VisionFive 2 Cannot boot

VisionFive 2 （English Forum)
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Hello, all. I have just purchased a VisionFive 2 (hereby referred to as VF2) from Taobao. When I received my VF2 the box was completely sealed with no sign of anything having been tampered with. However, when I tried to boot the latest debian image from SD card, I get nothing. (the 2024 may build). I tried the 2023 august build and the march (?) build, but also nothing.

I have a USB serial debugger, and when I attempt to boot form SD or internal flash I get something like

U-Boot SPL 2021.10 ([date information here])

I tried to follow the quick start guide to update the SPL and U-boot, but nothing like a press-a-key to interrupt menu showed up as stated. I tried a “Version 55” image that a forum memer recommended (i have since lost the link), but still to no avail.

I then tried to recover the bootloader. The CCCCCCCCCCC does show up correctly. I tried to follow this guide but when I try to use minicom on Artix Linux (arch basically) with lrzsz to send the recovery binary, it sends but gets stuck here:

JH7110 secondboot version: 230918-cc7c238                                                                                            
idcode: 0x1860C8

I tried the september and march 2023 binaries of the recovery firmware but to no avail. The output does not even with a mention of CPU frequency. May I please get some help? I really would like to get this running ASAP to do some programming.

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Update: I just tried the 2022 image, as stated in the official guide, and I get this output:

JH7110 secondboot version: 221205-74596a9                                                                                            
CPU freq: 1250MHz                                                                                                                    
idcode: 0x1860C8

which is the exact same as last time, except for that now the CPU frequency shows up and the date is different.

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There’s known issues when using lrzsz. due to a bug in the fw XMODEM implementation.

Try using any other implementation. I have had success with Teraterm. The tool tio has its own implementation as well.

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I tried tio, but it produced the exact same results. Teraterm is windows only, and I don’t want to bother with installing that.

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I tried teraterm yesterday, but also no luck.

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Can you try set dip switch to SD mode and try boot Arch Linux Image?

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how would that even work? if the bootloader is dead and the u-boot menu isnt showing in the spi how would it boot?

i could try. but i dont know your reasoning there

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If I understand correctly, when dip switch set to SD mode, the board will load u-boot directly from SD card, bypass the u-boot on the SPI flash.

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true, true. still skeptical though, because the u-boot still doesnt load from SD when im using debian. I will see/

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Just curious, how are you powering your board? When you set jumper to 3 and second jumper to 2 as in the link below what do you see?

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RISC-V/StarFive%20VisionFive%202

RC

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3 and 2 are not valid settings.

Despite all efforts, it still doesn’t work. No dip switch configuration boots, and when U-boot loads there is no interrupt menu at all and there is also no display output. I powered it through a usb-c brick supplied by the retailer, which should have worked. I also tried my apple bricks, but all to no luck.

I ended up returning the visionfive 2, I will get another one soon.

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@cwt your arch image does not work, same thing, no U-boot menu, nothing past the version text.

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It is possible that the issue is hardware-related.

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should be, which is why im returning it

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if you still have your board, we can give this another try.

Make sure the board dip switch settings are in uart mode when flashing these files to the sbc.
Power off and power on the board without any sdcard in it.
You should see the board boot up in uart recovery mode with a bunch of CCCCC’s flowing.

Then when you go through the steps described, you need to be very patient. These commands don’t complete within seconds. It’s more like 5 minutes to 35 minutes depending on the size of the files. This isn’t ethernet bandwidth; this is uart bandwidth which isn’t so fast to transfer very large amounts of data. As I also stated, when it succeeds, you will hear a beep when it’s completed and some response text. If you didn’t hear a beep and see the response text after 35 minutes, then you did something wrong. If you didn’t wait 35 minutes, you need to continue to be patient and wait a bit longer. I hope this advice helps.

Also after succeeding in flashing all those files in their appropriate partitions, you need to remember to reset the dip switch settings back to the manufacturer defaults. 0, 0.

That’s all for now. Capture all your output and paste it into this discussion if you want more help.

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The outputs are exactly as stated (somewhre) above. i have waited up to one hour, but no luck.

if you didn’t know, the file transfers only take 2 minutes max. the binary files are transferred to the VisionFive 2 in no more than 2 minutes for me. The files successfully transfer. the program does show output. however, itis only AFTER the program is done transferring that the visionfive 2 prints the JH7110 secondboot, some metadata and hangs (max 3 lines of output).

there is no point waiting longer than even 10 minutes. the file transfers happen very rapidly. it is the actual code stored in the .bin that is refusing to execute (the .bin that contains recovery info).